


Feel It In Your Bones

by SpoonerizeSwiftness (SplickedyHat)



Series: Oceanbound [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Aradia is n0t 0kay, F/M, Flashbacks, Foreign Language, Language, M/M, That is to say Gamzee's which is a mixture of Nahuatl Egyptian and Gaelic, War, and it's the best thing that's ever happened to her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 14:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SplickedyHat/pseuds/SpoonerizeSwiftness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Aradia Megido and you are n0t 0kay.  And it's the best thing that's ever happened to you.<br/>Side story to Poor Unfor-tuna-te Shoals, with spoilers for the final chapters and climax.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feel It In Your Bones

**Author's Note:**

> I got several questions regarding Aradia's 'death' and Karkat's discharge from the army, so I thought I would pay Aradia some much-needed attention, answer both questions and shove in some Mirthful Doctrine at the same time. Enjoy! :D

Sollux lies on the cold stone floor of the cave, and doesn’t breathe.

Everyone is yelling, going straight for him—but you take your time, letting the others rush ahead.  You cannot see his ghost.  He’ll be fine, for now.  You have to deal with the sudden enervation of your mind before you can deal with the feelings abruptly flooding into you.  Some part of you is still deadpan and numb, some part of you is floating far away, surrounded by ghosts, some part of you is searingly present in the here and now, terrified by the way Sollux just lies there, motionless except for the occasional twitch and spasm of red and blue sparks across his skin.

And then everyone gathered around him jerks back in shock, and Sollux is breathing again.

It was surprisingly anticlimactic, for the mechanism of sudden life in a body that looked like a corpse.  There was no sudden gasp or choking or coughing; he wasn’t breathing, and now he is.  You are uncaring, distantly pleased and knee-weakeningly grateful all at the same time.

It doesn’t go beyond breathing, though.  Sollux is obviously alive, but he just lies there still, breathing shallowly in and out, with a tiny, serene smile curling the corners of his bloody lips. 

The roof of the cave rumbles.  Everyone glances up, then at each other, and then Tavros bends down, unprompted, and pulls Sollux’s limp, bony body over one broad shoulder, pale and wincing but resolute.  You reach out with your new powers—the tons of rock bearing down above you needs almost all of your attention, but you push with your other hand  and let out a great lash of power and the rocks you brought down to block the return tunnel pulverize into sand.

“Get through,” you say firmly, and you are not surprised that it is Karkat who immediately gets to his feet, worries about Sollux neatly compartmentalized, and sets off towards the tunnel.  He never did leave the military behind.  “Tavros, can you carry him and run at the same time?”

He seems surprised that you would ask that—or maybe just surprised that you are taking the initiative and speaking above a monotone.  The dead part of you is still there, but it is fading and you feel so  _alive_.  “ _Tavros,_ ” you repeat, and he jumps.

“Yeah,” he says, and then blinks and straightens up, following Karkat towards the tunnel.  “—yeah!  Yeah, I’m fine, just my head hurts, but, I’m not burnt out, I don’t really…burn out like you guys do.”

“Explain to me what you did,” you say, and there’s a great wrench of released power as you duck into the tunnel behind him and let half of the cavern behind you tumble into chaos with a choking cloud of stone and dust.  “Keep going.”

“I…uh…” he sets off in great, long strides, and you hear the faint clink of the joints in his legs clicking and sliding.  Oh god, his legs…you forgot about that, about how  _angry_  you were, how hurt, how you walked straight into a stupid trap with your brain clouded and furious, looking for vengeance.  You shake that off—retreat into your dead side until that storm dies down.  “I just kind of…reached out to the fish and sent them at least a mile away, but the ones closer than that, were still dying.”  His face darkens—you’ve never found something that makes him look quite as fearsome as the meaningless death of animals. 

Then he winces, and the ferocity drains away again.  “I’ve never stretched that far, my brain really hurts.” 

He turns a little bit sideways and ducks his head, shoving through the door to the storage room you entered the cave through, and you slip through after him and finally let your power drain away.  The ground rumbles as, deep below you, the secret, ancient tunnel crumbles into oblivion.  The forgotten part of you that has hands itching for a trowel and a brush weeps for the loss of all that history.  Archeology…it’s been such a long time since the thought even interested you, but now your hands are twitching to try everything you’d forgotten you enjoyed.

Karkat has come around behind Tavros as you were thinking; he lifts Sollux’s lolling head.  Sollux makes no sign that he even feels the contact; just smiles that faint little smile into the distance, eyes peacefully closed, and Karkat flinches and lets his head fall again.

“…he’s still alive,” he allows.

“Well, that is, um, better than the alternative option, definitely,” says Tavros diplomatically, and then he looks up over Karkat’s shoulder and his eyes go wide.  “Uh…uh, Karkat…?”

Karkat turns sharply, staggers, and then takes a deep breath.  You feel it too, now, growing every second; a tentative, creeping horror.  You have grown so used to the constant presence of highblood influence in your mind that you almost didn’t register it for a while, but now that you have remembered how to feel again it is horrifying anew.  You retreat a little, locking yourself back up in the walls of dead numbness.

But yet again, Karkat surprises you all by breaking the mood beyond repair.

“Get out here you pan-addled freak-show!”  He yells into the darkness of a hundred nightmares, “—we beat her, now get your scrawny bruised ass over here before I fall down!”

The fear shuts off as though someone flicked a switch.  A shadow detaches itself from the wall and sidles forward, and you let yourself feel again as Makara stares at the four of you.  He’s holding his clubs in grey-knuckled hands—his eyes flash in the darkness, pure violet and red-orange, his teeth glint and his presence crawls up your spine like cold fire—

And then Karkat makes good on his promise, and falls over.

You catch him in mid-fall with a hasty flick of your hand, and Makara gets there barely a split second after you.  You let go with your powers;  Karkat groans and growls curses as Gamzee looks him over, long fingers poking and patting and soothing and testing bruises, but Gamzee seems far less preoccupied by the invective being leveled in his direction and far more interested by…the bright red stains on his hands…

You tense, remembering suddenly his line’s proclivity for color and for their horrible ‘art’ and “ _Fuck_ ,” Gamzee growls, and hauls Karkat properly up into his arms, holding him as easily as a child.  “Brother, this is a shit-ton of blood here and I am in no way doctorturer make but that is a bad motherfucking thing to not have inside you where it more properly goes.”

Everyone blinks.  You had almost forgotten that Karkat was injured, in the heat of the moment— _dammit_. 

Oh. 

Oh, but it feels nice to think that again, and mean it.  Even if you’re angry with yourself, the anger feels like flexing a muscle that’s been stiff for sweeps.  It feels so good it burns.

“We need to get him medical attention,” you say, and everyone looks at you.  “Sollux needs to rest, and so does Tavros.  Has Nepeta returned?”

“…uhh…” starts Gamzee slowly, and you sigh. 

“The olive-blood,” you clarify for him. “…the one with the horns that look like meow-beast ears.”

“Oh!”  He shakes his head.  “Haven’t laid eyes on her, sister.”

Your insides still shrivel a little when he calls you that, so familiarly, but you nod and dismiss the sensation.  It’s not important right now.  He’s under control and if he shows himself not to be, you will deal with him.  You are telekinetic.  You don’t need to fear him.

“There are a few rooms with places to lie down,” you say, and you step forward and take the lead. “Come on.  We need to plan.”

\--

Sollux doesn’t move or react as you strip off his shirt, or as you bandage his skewered hand and the wounds on his chest.  You are worrying as well, but not as badly as your comrades; you cannot see his ghost and you can still… _feel_  him.  He’s in there.  After a psychic blast like the one that finished the battle, you aren’t surprised that his mind has retreated.  You have never felt that kind of discharge from anyone before.  It was enough to burn your bones. 

Terezi comes back halfway through the process, jittery and hyperactive, and darts from Sollux to Karkat, worrying over the former and clinging to the latter.  Karkat lets her hug him—because, apparently, he has no energy to fight her off, and that is the only reason—but then she shimmies her way down and starts licking the bandages on his stomach and you have to separate them before he can tear his neatly stitched wounds.  Terezi giggles but takes the hint, and goes back to fussing over Sollux.

And then she leans down, sniffs, and makes a soft, sudden little sound of surprise.  “Aradia,” she says, and there is no trace of humor in her voice.  “Come here?”

You do.  She has lifted up one of Sollux’s eyelids, and your blood-pusher drops so low it feels like it’s throbbing in your guts as you get a good look at the eyes underneath.

They’re pure black. 

You have to take a deep breath, and Terezi looks up at you, brow furrowing in concern.  “What?”  She asks sharply, “—what does that mean?  I smelled it right, didn’t I, his eyes—”

“He pushed his powers too far,” you say distantly—compartmentalize, deal with feelings with one part of your mind, facts with another… “The ultimate extreme of psychic burn-out.  He’s...he’s damaged his eyes.  And I don’t think there’s any way to fix it.”

Terezi’s hand tenses on Sollux’s face, and you catch a glimpse of her own pure-red eyes as she looks back down at him, lips tightening.  And you recall suddenly the times when you were too numb to be there for Sollux, when she would go up to his room and come back prodding him at the end of her cane and giggling, insisting he try some new food she’d created.  Making him eat.  Making him sleep when Karkat wasn’t there to yell at him.  Arguing down his more reckless plans with laws you know for a fact were half invented.

Oh.

Hm _._

“You can teach him how to see like you do,” you say, and Terezi points her noise in your direction, takes a deep whiff, and then, slowly, gives you a look that is far more shrewd than it has any right to be.

You hold her blind gaze and she purses up her lips and goes ‘huh.’ Like she’s just found evidence that doesn’t fit her case.

And then, abruptly, your heart jumps.  It takes you a second to even understand why, and then you see it.  Sollux has opened his eyes. “Sollux?”  You say urgently, but he doesn’t react, just stares blindly up at the ceiling through his blackened eyes.  Then, slowly, his eyelids fall shut again.  Karkat has obviously been loitering just outside the door worrying himself sick—at the sound of your exclamation he’s inside and kneeling next to the couch in seconds.

“Bro?”  He mutters, and you can see the tense set of his shoulders under his shirt.  You remember him—  _kneeling on the muddy ground over a green-blood kid, holding her head up, holding her guts in with the other hand, so completely focused on her even though they’d never met_ … “Sollux?  You’re…you’re freaking me out, come on…”

You hear footsteps and turn, and Feferi comes in in quick, sharp little strides, fish-tail replaced with feet again, barefoot and determined.  Nobody else even seems to register—she brushes right past them and goes to lean over her matesprit as well, fins fluttering, mouth set. 

Karkat is shaking, trying to explain to Feferi, trying to stay professional and in control and failing miserably.  You consider going over to put a hand on his shoulder, see if you can impart some strictly platonic comfort, but at that second—

Sollux gasps in an enormous breath and sits suddenly bolt upright on the couch, then falls back onto the armrest with an audible  _thunk_  and pants, eyes flickering blindly around, breathing hard.  There is clamor and uproar all around, and then Sollux makes a winded noise as Karkat throws himself forward and hugs him so hard it drives all the air out of his lungs, swearing tearfully at the top of his lungs.  Sollux pats his head once or twice, absently, and then, slowly, reaches up to his eyes. 

Your guts twist, and you find yourself watching anxiously for his reaction, trying to read his face.  But his face isn’t saying anything at all.  One corner of his mouth twists up ruefully.  He blinks a few times and traces the psionic scars seared across his nose and cheekbones.  Pokes at the holes where his front teeth used to be and winces.  Then winces again as Karkat squeezes him.

“… _KK,_ ” he says, soft and hoarse, and pulls weakly at Karkat’s shoulder.  “Stabbed…in the chest—can you…?”

Karkat lets go abruptly and pulls back, scrubbing at his face with both hands and swearing all over again—then doubles over, teeth bared, snarling in pain.  Feferi sits up and goes over to him instead, taking him by the arm and leading him away—and you take their place as Sollux sits up, careful and slow.

“Damage report?”  He asks, and you’re relieved to hear that some of the strength has come back to his voice.  He sounds almost back to normal—although all traces of the lisp he hated so much are gone. 

You give him the general situation.  In the background, Feferi settles down next to his head and begins to stroke his hair, rubbing slow circles on his temples, and he noticeably relaxes into the contact, eyes falling half-closed as he listens to you.  Terezi starts trying to lick Karkat’s bandages again.  Gamzee is…absent.  You eventually find him, lurking in a corner, keeping out of the way of the excitement and looking spooked, but not urgently unstable. 

Sollux doesn’t even wince at the word ‘blind’, and when he looks up at you and gives you that uneven, sharp-toothed little smirk of his you have to smile back at him.  You tell him the truth—that your forces are significantly weakened, that you’re not sure you can deal with a highblood purposefully directing his power at you—and he sits up a little further and reaches for you with his unbandaged hand.

You take his fingers, and as they curl around yours you recall, suddenly, just how long it has been since someone’s skin touched yours.  He looks made out of bones and he can barely squeeze back and you hastily file away the feeling that you want to hide him away and never let anyone near him ever again because you  _just finished_ talking to Terezi about this and it is definitely not the time.  You drop his hand. 

Time to get things done.

You are alive again.

You intend to stay that way.

\--

The meeting is a messy affair.  Nerves are on edge, injuries are throbbing, Tavros is exhausted, Sollux is fed up, Karkat is snappish and you are in no way filling the role of general voice of reason that you used to fill.  You and Karkat have fallen into a pattern of neutrality and aggression over the past few perigees since you…changed.  Now you find yourself uprooting that careful order by instead filling the role you used to when you were his commanding officer; counseling not just passivity but surgical strikes, pincer movements and sabotage.  Luring the grand highblood into the center of your militia before you attack rather than trailing out the fight onto the open ground in front of the city, where the grand highblood will be able to maneuver freely and use his weapon of choice with impunity. 

And then you suggest that Karkat should be in charge of military affairs, there’s a murmur of agreement and Karkat snaps.

You should have seen it coming, really—the twitchiness of him and the way he keeps pressing a hand to his injuries, the rising color in his cheeks as  you argued and the twitching muscle in his jaw.  You served together for a sweep and a half.  You’ve known him even longer than that.  You should have realized he was on the brink of a meltdown.

“Yeah, why don’t we put me in charge?!”  He snarls, and slams his hands down on the table with a  _bang_  like a gunshot, shoving himself onto his feet.  His chair rattles back away from him—he’s breathing hard, eyes wide.  “Because I was  _discharged_ and I was too much of a fucking coward to argue?  I’ve been in a couple hundred  _borderline skirmishes_ , how does that qualify me to command an army, fucking  _explain that to me!!_ ”

He’s scared.

You know it as sudden and clear as if a voice whispered it in your ear, and now you see it too; the way his hands are shaking as he clenches them at his sides, how his eyes dart around like a cornered animal looking for a way out, the paleness of his face.  And you recall the circumstances of his honorable discharge…

“You’re the councilor of wartime affairs,” says Sollux quietly.  “You always said you wanted to lead when you were a wiggler, KK.”

Karkat swallows hard and takes a breath, and when he speaks again his voice is almost even.  “When I was a wiggler I thought it was all glory and medals,” he growls, and his claws dig into the table.  “ _—_ I’d never been  _shot_  or sliced open or poisoned or  _stabbed_  and I’d sure as hell never seen the Grand Highblood flatten whole regiments single-handed.”  His eyes are distant suddenly, even as he glares around at the other councilors you can see he’s not looking at them.  He’s looking somewhere far away.  “He didn’t even care we were a scouting party, he didn’t care which side of the border we were on—fuck, he doesn’t even care if he takes out his own soldiers!  He just _breaks_ things do you have any idea—”

You do.  Oh god, you do.  You remember the feeling in your guts when they brought back the corpses of his scouting party ( _one survivor, just one, the others threw themselves on their own swords, the others crawled and begged to die)_  when you asked for your most trusted officer and everyone looked at their feet and couldn’t meet your eyes.  And you sprinted to the medical tent and found him covered in old blood and filth and tears and vomit and screaming— _sobbing_ , pleading for someone to  _make it stop get him out make it_ stop.

You remember what this did to him last time.

But you know what you have to do and you lock up the part of you that’s crying and don’t let her out.  Not now.  “You’re resistant,” you hear yourself say, as though in a dream, clear and firm and definite.  “Moreso, now that you’ve accepted your calling.”

He just laughs at you, and you would rather he had screamed again, because you can’t deal with the bitter, horrible disgust in that laugh.  You know, you know what you’re saying is horrible, you’ve felt the Grand Highblood’s presence before—you’ve been in his presence, trapped, nowhere to go, you’ve had him toy with your brain until you had to kill feeling or die, and then you were hauled back here and dumped at the city gates, covered in your own blood.

You died.

And he might do the same.

“But nevertheless,” you say, and it’s only that  _might_  that keeps you from breaking down and taking it back, apologizing, backing down.  If anyone else was set across from the Grand Highblood, that might would become a definite.  The future would be set.

They would die.

“Wasn’t for nothing he got all gifted his titles of lordship,” says Makara quietly, and you jump.  He’s been very quiet.  Now, the hints of a strange accent in his voice are heavier than ever.  “…Lord of a Thousand Terrors. Most Mirthful of Murderers.”  You blink at him—the first title is a well-known one, but the second you have never heard before, and Makara’s voice has a kind of slow, subdued wonder to it, like he’s saying something he can’t help but be awed by.  “…Ringmaster of his Lordship of the Double Death.”

_Take her back and leave her there.  And you tell your shitblood friends, little one, you **tell them what happens to the ones who cross me**.  I will bring the double death to you._

**_Here’s one_ ** _._

(you can’t remember whether you screamed,  _everything_  was screaming.)

You know the words  _Aleire Saldheires_  as well—but it’s only when he repeats himself in more common language that you remember why.   _We sacrifice this soul to the mirthful messiahs_ ,  _we sacrifice to Aleire Saldheires, mirth itself, to the faces of ecstasy and wrath._ Of course.  A ditheistic religion.  You forgot.  (You forgot a lot of things about the days you died.) 

Then Karkat raps one of Gamzee’s horns hard with his pen, and the coldness in the air snaps and dies away.  He glowers at Gamzee, and you are surprised by how good moirallegiance looks on him.  He is exhausted and angry, but he looks practically effervescent with stern paleness.  Makara is subdued—and moreso when he’s pressed about his progenitor.  You don’t feel sympathy for him, not as such, but you see his hands clench and unclench at his sides and see a measure of forced casualness in his off-handed shrug.  If the Grand Highblood does not care whether he attacks his own army or not, would he care if he was permanently traumatizing his descendant? 

You consider briefly the pros and cons of tracking Makara down without Karkat present and pressing him further on the nature of his experience in the Big Top, then file it away for later as you are brought abruptly back to the events at hand by Terezi cat-calling. 

Karkat has gone a blotchy, furiously embarrassed red, but thankfully before he can start in on a rant or get out any of his impressively varied insults Nepeta snaps out “We don’t have time to argue about this!” and the rest of the councilors jump and  then look abashed. 

Karkat doesn’t argue against his position of command again after his initial outburst, and you are grateful for that.  You don’t know if you could go through it again, telling him he’s your only hope when you know full well what happened to him last time.  But now he seems to have given up on arguing.  He’s going through facts with dogged, resigned efficiency instead.  He’s planning his strategies around his own capacity as a distraction. 

You know it’s what needs to be, but it still makes you sick.

You all drift off to bed that morning, unhappy and uncertain and subdued.  Feferi leads Sollux off to his rooms and you don’t see her come back out again afterwards—not that she has anywhere else to sleep.  Still, you take note.  Karkat’s eyes are very far away and you hope his new moirail notices—unstable though he may be, he’s not the only one who needs soothing.  Tavros looks dead tired and you didn’t notice, in your state of numb indifference over the sweeps, the way he seems so much  _older._ He’s so very different from the little boy with the too-big horns you used to play games with.

You have missed a lot.

You lie awake in your cocoon that day, and don’t sleep. You’d forgotten what it was like to have so many thoughts, so many  _feelings_!  You are almost sick with worry, you’re flying high on excitement, you’re remembering every stupid thing people have said to you that should have made you angry and working yourself up over them just to feel that biting sting of anger in your chest, and then remember the amazing things people have said or done for you and you end up lying there holding your sopor patch in one hand, staring up at the ceiling and crying tears of pure overload.

It’s the most amazing thing you have ever felt.

Eventually you must drop off, because you remember waking up.  But you don’t remember what you dream.

\--

That afternoon you wake up before sunset, with your head ringing and no desire to stay in bed whatsoever.  The windows are casting angular patches of sunset light over your floor and you are still holding your sopor patch in one hand, now crumpled and battered.  This is the first night in more than a sweep you have slept without it, and yet not a single nightmare.  You go to your accoutrements storage unit to replace your wrinkled dress and find that all the clothes that Kanaya has given you—the clothes you shoved into your closet and forgot about—are a hundred times more gorgeous than you remember.  You try on dresses and trousers and tops for the first time in as long as you care to remember, you wash your face and take a brush to your hair with renewed vigor.  You are probably going to die tonight, after all.

And then you walk out of your room, close the door, turn around and have to look up.  And up.  And  _up._

Makara appears to have absconded from Karkat’s sleeping quarters without bothering to properly wake himself up or make himself decent; his hair is an even bigger disaster than it was yesterday.  He blinks down at you sleepily for several seconds before he seems to recognize you—at which point he abruptly backs up a few steps until he’s almost pressed against the door to Karkat’s rooms and stares at his bony bare feet like they’re somehow fascinating to him.  He’s still wearing the ancient pair of baggy pants Karkat mysteriously found for him yesterday, but at some point he apparently forsook his shirt and there are a  _lot_  of bandages and scabs.  There are even more bruises.  You can see every one of his ribs.

You personally would like to go back into your room and never look at him again, but you understand why Karkat pities him so much.  Even you find him platonically pathetic.

“Uh,” says Makara awkwardly.  “…hey.”

Yes, you definitely don’t want this conversation to be happening.  His horns look just like his ancestor’s, his hair would certainly be the same untamable mess if it was allowed to grow out, his eyes are  already pure violet. 

…on the other hand…

…this may be one of your only opportunities to talk to him without Karkat around to interfere.  You cross your arms over your chest, straighten your back and look him right in the eyes, and he looks frankly unnerved.

“Good afternoon,” you say, and nod at the door behind him.  “…Karkat isn’t awake yet?”

His face softens, and his shoulders relax slightly.  “…grumpy little motherfucker needs all his sleep,” he says, and for a second you can’t read the look on his face, or the shiver of tension that runs through him.  “…he’s gonna have a…a hard night.  Think it’s right to figure like we all are.”

Ah.  Of course.  You suppose you aren’t the only ones who have cause to be nervous in the presence of the Grand Highblood.  A runaway who rejected all his responsibilities and abandoned his church might not be received well by the powerful man whose authority he denied. 

Well, there’s no point in trying to ease into your preferred line of questioning gently.  You take a step forward, look him in the eyes, and say, clearly and firmly, “…Makara, tell me about the ‘Double Deaths’.”

He looks shocked, then confused—opens his mouth and then shuts it again, but can't manage to actuallly form words.  He already looks more jumpy than you are frankly comfortable with.  You do your best to soften the tension of your shoulders and the harshness of your voice, and try again.  “…if you please.  I have a reason to be interested and you are the best source of information we could possibly hope to have.  I would be in your debt.”  Those words are technically a formality, but you still have to force them out, choking at the thought of owing a highblood anything at all. (Maybe you aren’t as ‘over’ your dislike of his kind as you thought.) 

He is hunched in on himself uncomfortably, and his ears are pinned back—obviously this is not a topic he is keen to discuss.  You wait.

“Uhh—” he doesn’t meet your eyes.  “…you…you seen the second one already, sis—uh.  M-ma’am.”

Well isn’t that interesting?  Maybe he’s noticed how you flinch when he calls you ‘sister’.  Not that awkward attempts at respect are much better, but they are funny to some extent and you choose to not comment.  Instead, you take a half step forward and he flinches back a little bit.  He’s got his back to a wall.  The strategic advantage is yours.

“What do you mean, I’ve ‘seen’ it?  How do you know?”

“You—I can—I…” he crosses his arms, eyes fixed on the ground at his feet; his fingers tap strange rhythms on his forearms.  His voice is a sort of uncomfortable mumble.  “…I can see it.  It’s in your eyes.  All wicked  _sairfenn_ ,  _sraéatlróch_ —”

“I don’t speak that language,” you interrupt as calmly as possible, and smile brightly at him.  He looks even more disturbed.  You tone back the smile a little bit.  You’re not entirely sure you’re remembering the right way to make that expression.  People keep kind of backing away when you smile at them. 

“The—uh…” He hesitates and then rakes his fingers through his hair and shrugs.  “…I don’t…know how to up and say it any other motherfuckin’ way, though.  Like…c…cruel…humor, like…it’s just how you say—”

 _The wicked harshwhimsy, the hellmirth—but the mirth and the whimsy are only for the faithful, little_ shalcel _, for my wicked sisters and brothers.  For you, the motherfucking harsh. **For you the motherfucking hell.**_

“Harshwhimsy,” you say, and he jumps and stares at you.  Nods slowly, half shrugging.  “Harshwhimsy and hellmirth, right?”

“How the motherfuck—”

“You can tell one of…your kind…did something to me?”  You press, and for a moment the part of your that’s emotional, the part of you that’s alive, snaps out of control.  You jerk forward, leaning forward so he has no choice but to look at you, and raise your voice.  “ _Look at me_.”

 

He looks.  You meet his eyes and he winces, but takes a deep breath and lets it out and holds your gaze.  His face looks very pale, his eyes are a searing violet that sends flashes of memories drifting loose through your mind.

“Not just—” he swallows hard.  Licks his lips.  His teeth dig into his skin, almost hard enough to draw blood.  “…not just ‘one of us’.  I know…I been made all familiar-like with my  _tadaidh’s_ power, I been made  _fully_  motherfucking familiar, ain’t a thing you forget easy.  And you got his ghosts all coiled up in your eyes.  He didn’t took you to the first one, the  _tlach táes,_ reason being you ain’t lying around all being to get your rot on and shit.  He just done you up on your inside.   _Anmrad táes._ If you do one the other’s supposed to come after at no short order but I guess he didn’t give you a mean to finish it.”

( _Their eyes were all empty and they begged to be killed--they threw themselves on their own weapons_ )

“…so the first death is the…death of the body?”  You guess, and he nods jerkily.  “And the second one is…what, soul-death?”

Another nod.  It is painfully obvious he wants nothing more than to not be here. 

“But I came back,” you say sharply.  He winces and shrugs.  “If he ‘killed’ me, why would I come back?”

“I never done!” He snaps back, and his voice is almost a snarl, defensive and almost affronted.  He lurches forward a little and growls in your face instead, and his sudden willingness to meet your eyes, his voluntary invasion of your personal space, they scare you more than all the snarls and curses he could ever throw your way.  “—the fuck should I know about--?!”

He goes still so close to your face you can make out the strange, cold scent of him, and just freezes there, eyes falling shut.  He is visibly restraining himself; his teeth are bared in their entirety, longer than yours, dangerous, every inch of him a threat.  And then he takes a deep, deep breath and relaxes back against the door, all loose lines of exhaustion and misery.

“…I’m going back to him,” he says, and you don’t bother to ask stupid questions that you already know the answer to, like,  _go back to who_?  You wonder how long Karkat has dreamed of waking cuddled up with a quadrantmate.  You nod, but Gamzee isn’t waiting on your permission.  He’s already gone.

\--

The Grand Highblood is just as you remember him.

Actually inaccurate.  You remember him silhouetted against stained glass windows and walls painted with blood, unmasked, but face slathered with paint in the barbaric likeness of a skull.  You remember him relaxed in his own palace, at ease, with a bottle of colored sugar-water in one hand and his hands dripping blood of all colors down the arms of his throne.  You remember him as the king, the priest, the man who would kill you.

You see him now as the warlord.

Someone in the crowd shifts, raising a hand like they’re going to go for a weapon, and you reach out and press their hand back down with your telekinetics before any of the highbloods can notice or react.  Sollux sways a little.  You steady him so subtly you doubt he even notices, and in front of you and to your left Feferi reaches out behind the cover of the railing and takes his hand for a second. 

This, you suspect, is your own private hell.  You may, in fact, be actually physically dead.  Maybe the combination of both ‘deaths’ has effectively brought you back to life, but in a nightmare world.  Worth considering.  You will have to ask Makara later.

If there is a later.

When you first found yourself ‘alive’ again, you analyzed yourself.  You predicted how you would function in the presence of the man who was responsible for battering the feeling out of you, making more than a sweep of your life into a living hell of grey, emotionless nothingness.  Your predictions did not speak positively for your chances.

Your predictions are almost 100% accurate.  You stand very still, and you breathe, you watch events unfold and you almost manage to keep yourself from blacking out.  But the Grand Highblood looks you over, one by one like he can see right through each and every one of you.  When he passes over you you  _know_  he’s meeting your eyes, even from this distance; you can feel the impact of your gazes locking like a splash of icy water on your bones.   The shock sets you swaying, floundering, searching for what you should be feeling—your vision goes black and full of screaming and you don’t want him to send you back, you  _can’t go back again_ , if you have to lose what it is that makes you  _you_ all over again you would rather  _die_ —

And then his attention leaves you, and you are still upright and still breathing.  Feferi has drawn her weapon—charming, cheerful Feferi is giving orders like she’s more royal than his palace and his soldiers, his armies and his ancient bloodline, and you are…still standing. 

You throw in what power you have in support as their weapons grind together and her feet slide.  You don’t think she notices you.  She doesn’t notice anyone.  You fought under the ground, against the woman that everyone in your city thought was a myth.  You fought and you prevailed.  This fight belongs to the two highbloods who have forsaken their bloodrights for the sake of your city, and you close your eyes and, for the first time in your life, you purposely let go.

\--

In the end, you are surprised to find that you are all alive.

You are going to keep it that way.


End file.
